The San Diego Mayoral Special Election is now just two weeks away, and over 75,000 votes have been cast – likely representing 25% of the overall electorate this coming November 19th.
As the following charts show, these early voters have followed some distinct patterns with regard to ethnic, partisan and socioeconomic turnout. Elements of the turnout have also held consistent to PDI targeting through the SD Likely Voter Universes and the Early Voter modeling.
The partisanship of voters so far have been strongly Republican – much stronger than registration or the likely voter universes. This could be an attribute of the early voters or indicative of a pattern that will continue.
The ethnicity of the votes cast has been predominantly white, with Latino turnout overall at 14% – close to their 17% of the overall electorate. This contrasts with some polling which was showing Latino turnout to be in the 25-19% range.
The relatively lower turnout of ethnic voters can also be seen in the council district breakdown, where districts 4, 8 and 9, all in the southeastern portion of San Diego, have the lowest performance thus far.
Other factors, like homeownership, which can be a proxy for wealth, begin to show strong performance, while the more working class or low income in apartments are sub-par. Similarly, Online Registrants are severely underperforming, as are all new registrants. This is in stark contrast to the 2012 General where new registrants over-performed and Online registrants hit mid-80% turnout in most of the state.
The strongest factors yet are seen in the PDI Early Absentee universe and the likely voter universe, seen here with 13SDP3 as the example. Turnout of PDI Early Absentees is more than double that of the overall absentee voter universe. 